


Negotiations

by Mesa



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, King's Rising - fixit fic, M/M, Remix - King's Rising chapters 3 and 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:25:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7687921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mesa/pseuds/Mesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King's Rising fix-it fic.  A remix of chapters 3 and 4.<br/>As a remix, this uses more of the original text than most fics. All credit remains with the author.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negotiations

_Laurent said, ‘Hello, lover.’_

_It was not going to be simple. Damen forced himself to take it in. He forced himself to take it all in, and to stroll himself inside the tent, so that he stood in the elegant surrounds in full armour, crushing delicate embroidered silks under his muddied feet._

_He threw the Regent’s banner down onto the table. It clattered, in a mess of mud and stained silk. Then turned his eyes to Laurent. He wondered what Laurent saw when he looked at him. He knew he looked different._

_‘Charcy is won.’_

_‘I thought it would be.’_

_He made himself breathe through that. ‘Your men think you’re a coward. Nikandros thinks that you deceived us. That you sent us to Charcy, and left us there to die by your uncle’s sword.’_

_‘And is that what you think?’ said Laurent._

_‘No.’ Damen said, ‘Nikandros doesn’t know you.’_

_‘And you do.’_

_Damen looked at the arrangement of Laurent’s weight, the careful way he was holding his body. Laurent’s left hand was still casually resting against the tent pole._

_Deliberately, he stepped forward, and clasped Laurent’s right shoulder._

_Nothing, for a moment. Damen tightened his grip, and ground in with his thumb. Harder. He watched Laurent turn ashen. Finally, Laurent said, ‘Stop.’_

_He let go. Laurent had wrenched back and was clutching his shoulder, where the blue of his doublet had darkened. Blood, welling up from some newly bandaged, subterranean place, and Laurent was staring at him, his eyes oddly wide._

 

For a moment Damen forgot everything else in sudden relief.  An explanation. ‘You’re hurt.  What happened?’

Laurent kept his voice steady.  ‘It hardly matters.’

‘You wouldn’t break an oath,’ said Damen, past the feeling in his chest. ‘Unless you were stopped.’

‘I have Fortaine,’ Laurent said coolly.  ‘Just as we planned.’

‘But you didn’t ride in from the north, as we planned.’  Damen pushed away his memories, the hours of hard killing, the dying hope for support, and reached for the one conviction that needed to sustain him now. ‘You told me to trust you.  I do.’

‘All evidence suggests your trust is misguided.’

‘I know you,’ Damen repeated stubbornly.  ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this.  I don’t know why you want it to look like you betrayed me deliberately.  But you would not break your word to me unless you were prevented.’

Laurent didn’t answer. He still had a hand clutched to his shoulder, his fingers sticky with blood.

For a moment Damen wondered who had inflicted the injury, and whether they still lived.  He forced that thought away, and gestured slightly.  ‘That wound does not suggest you were waiting here as quietly as you want us to believe.  If you will not tell me anything else, I will take that as my evidence.’ 

Laurent dropped his hand and half turned his head, dismissively.  ‘Take it as you choose.’

‘Laurent.  You asked me to do this with you – for you.  You asked me for three days, for a strategy to meet your uncle at Charcy.  I have done everything you asked me.  Why are you treating me this way?’

‘This way?  What way?’

‘As though I am … your enemy.’

Laurent turned back and met his eyes, just as Damen realized the answer and went cold. 

‘My enemy?’ Laurent said.

He made himself look at Laurent. The truth was an awful presence in his chest. He thought of the single night they had spent together. He thought of Laurent, giving himself, dark-eyed and vulnerable.  Outside, two armies were poised to fight. The moment was here, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

 _I’ve come to tell you who I am_ , Damen wanted to say.  But the time for that was long past.  Laurent had gathered intelligence.  He had sent a herald at the precise moment the battle had ended.  He had known that the Regent’s forces were defeated.  It was impossible for him not to know who led the men that defeated them. 

Damen said instead, ‘You know who I am.’

‘I’ve always known who you are, Damianos,’ said Laurent.

Damen heard it, as the interior of the tent seemed to change, so that all of the objects in it took on a different shape.

‘Did you think,’ said Laurent, ‘I wouldn’t recognise the man who killed my brother?’

Each word was an ice chip. Painful, sharp; a shard. Laurent’s voice was perfectly steady. Damen stepped back blindly. His thoughts swam.

‘I knew in the palace, when they dragged you in front of me,’ said Laurent. The words continued, steady, relentless. ‘I knew in the baths when I ordered you flayed. I knew—’

‘At Ravenel?’ said Damen.

Drawing breath with difficulty, he faced Laurent while the seconds passed.

‘If you knew,’ said Damen, ‘how could you—’

‘Let you fuck me?’

His own chest hurt, so that he almost didn’t notice the signs of it in Laurent, the control, the face, pale at any time, now white.

‘I needed a victory at Charcy. You provided it. It was worth enduring,’ Laurent spoke the terrible, lucid words, ‘your fumbling attentions for that.’

‘You’re lying.’ Damen’s heart hammered once in his chest, then slowed, and he spoke calmly. ‘You had no idea your uncle was on his way here when you had me brought to your rooms.  You expected me to leave in the morning, you made the arrangements for it yourself.  Knowing who I was – you released me, left me free to ride back to Akielos.’ He thought of Laurent surrendering, not the first time, but the second, the slower, sweeter time, the tension in him, the way he had—‘You had nothing to gain from sleeping with me first.  Nothing.’ 

‘Is that what you want to hear,’ Laurent said, ‘that I knew who you were and I still let you fuck me, my brother’s killer, who cut him down like an animal on the field?’

‘No,’ said Damen, his stomach clenching with cramp, ‘that isn’t—’  He took a step forward.  ‘Laurent, six years ago, when I fought Auguste, I—’

‘ _Don’t you say his name_.’ The words were forced out of Laurent. ‘Don’t you ever say his name, you _killed my brother_.’

Laurent was breathing shallowly, almost panting as he spoke, his hands rigid on the edge of the table behind him.

Damen forced himself to speak, to meet Laurent’s eyes and hold them.  ‘Yes,’ he said.  ‘I know what I did.  It was war.  It was him or me – that is what war is.’  He took a step forward.  It was urgent, now, that he finish this.  ‘You taught me that, Laurent. You taught me that war means killing and hating without reason, without knowing.  I can’t tell you I’m sorry I killed your brother, because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here.  But I’m more sorry than I can say for the pain I caused you.  I’m sorry he is gone, and that I never knew him.  And I won’t let it happen again.’

‘You won’t let it happen again.’ Laurent mocked him. ‘A little late for that now that you’ve led your Akielon army against the Veretian Regent.’

‘I did that for you.  I did that to stop a war.  You are a better leader than he is, and with you Akielos and Vere can have peace.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Laurent said pleasantly, and turned aside slightly to motion toward a table with a sheet of paper.  ‘I have terms ready to offer that I’m sure you’ll find very --’

‘Terms?’  Damen stared at him.  He had not come here prepared to negotiate.  Laurent had?  ‘You want to negotiate with me?  Now?’

‘What better time?'

He said, ‘Did you plan this from the beginning?’

‘The hard part was getting Guion to let me into his fort.’  Laurent said it steadily, the private edge to his voice a little more private than usual.

Damen closed his eyes, returned to the memory from three days before and added his newfound knowledge to it.  ‘You thought I was leaving.  You practically threw me out.  When you knew I was Damianos, returning to Akielos -- and you did not press for terms then.’

‘What was the point?  You were alone then; you did not have a border lord’s army behind you.’

Damen stared.  ‘Nikandros?  You _knew_ those were the reinforcements.  You made the arrangement with him months ago.  When you left me at Ravenel and told me reinforcements would arrive within three days – you didn’t tell me who they were, but you knew.’

‘Yes.  I was sorry to miss the happy reunion.’ 

‘And when you asked me to stay – when we making those plans … all that time you intended this – this cold-blooded negotiation?’

Laurent looked at Damen, as though his point had just been proven.  ‘I thought you said you knew me.’

‘I do know you.’  Through it all, Damen held on to that.  He couldn’t think it through clearly but he could catch a glimmer of it, a glimmer of the edge of it. Of course this was Laurent, who didn’t do anything without a dozen motives.  Plans within plans, plans behind plans.  It was not hard to believe that he had planned for this, even as he worked together in alliance with Damen. And yet:  ‘You are a man of honour.  You would not have asked me to do this for you, to stay with you, to defer my freedom, if you intended to repay it like this.’

‘And so far I think this is a very honourable arrangement.  You have Nikandros’ forces, and I have what is left of my uncle’s, and Guion’s.  If you do not hold Ravenel by now, you are not the commander I thought you were.  You have Ravenel, and I have Fortaine.’

It was exasperating.  ‘Laurent, I did not do this to win Ravenel.  I did not do this to strengthen my own position.  I did it – for you.  Because you asked me to, because I wanted to help you, because it seemed like the best strategy for you.’

‘It was the best strategy – for both of us.  I told you I would release you and I have.  I told you we would face each other as free men and whatever would fall out between us would.  So now we may negotiate as free men.’

Damen stepped back.  ‘Is this how you expect it to be between us?  Mercenary?  Cold?  No sentiment?  It doesn’t have to be.  You asked me for my help and I gave it willingly.  I told you that you will have me for a friend.’

Laurent let out a sudden, breathless laugh.  ‘Is that what we are?  Friends?’

He remembered, as Laurent obviously did, the last time they had spoken this way.  Just before the kiss on the battlements.  So much had changed since then, and yet nothing had. 

‘I … do not understand,’ Damen said carefully.  ‘If you knew before, who I am and what I did to your brother – why could you accept my loyalty and – feelings for you then, and not now?  What has changed?’

Laurent’s voice was hard when he answered.  ‘What has changed,’ Laurent said, ‘Is that I no longer have to pretend.’

‘You never had to pretend.  You could have exposed me at any time.’

‘But I didn’t have to.  I could let you keep on thinking you had me fooled, and eke out what use I could from you.  Now the world knows who you are as well as I do.  You are Damianos, _prince-killer_ , and there is no need for pretending anymore.’

He felt the breath forced out from his lungs.  ‘I was not pretending,’ Damen said. ‘Whatever service I gave you -- it was true.’

‘Ah yes.  The man who gave me good counsel. Who stood by me. Who never lied to me.’

‘ _I_ never lied to you.’

The words were awful in the silence that followed them.

‘“Laurent, I am your slave”?’ said Laurent.

‘That was not a lie,’ he said, ‘and you know it.’

‘But you were not a slave.’

‘I did not mean I was legal chattel.  Don’t pretend you thought that’s what I meant.  I was _your_ slave, Laurent.  As I am today.’

‘I don’t know what manner of man stands before me now. All I know is that I am facing him for the first time.’

‘He is here.’ His flesh ached as if he had been prised open. ‘We are the same.’

‘Kneel then,’ said Laurent. ‘Kiss my boot.’

He looked into Laurent’s excoriating blue eyes. The impossibility of it was like a sharp pain. He gazed at Laurent across the distance between them. The words hurt. But he had faced pain before, and he needed to find a way to cross the distance.

‘I cannot offer obeisance to you as Prince,’ he said slowly, ‘because I am King, and we must find honourable terms between our nations.  As a man, I will kneel if you want me to.’  And to prove his words, he did so, dropping to his knees gently before Laurent.  It did not hurt as much to offer this quiet intimacy as it did to stand bargaining bloodlessly with him. ‘If it might help you find a way to forgiveness. If it helps you understand that I am ready to serve you in any way I can as a private person.’  

Laurent did not speak right away, and Damen felt him clinging to his determination, his refusal to accept what Damen offered.  Since the age of thirteen, Laurent had learned to rely on no one but himself.

‘But you are not a private person,’ Laurent said. ‘You are a king, and we will parley as kings.’

Damen paused, resigned himself, and stood up.  ‘If that is how it must be, I will parley with you as with an ally.  Why did you bring me here?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ said Laurent.  ‘My uncle is in Akielos.’

 

******

 

‘Laurent,’ he said, ‘ _what have you done_?’

‘Charcy,’ said Laurent, ‘was a distraction. I have it from Guion. My uncle sailed for Ios three days ago, and by now he has made landfall.’

Damen moved three steps away, to let that information sink in. He found himself with his hand braced on one of the tent poles. ‘I see. So we must form an alliance, to fight Kastor and the Regent together.’

‘I told you I have terms to offer.’ Laurent’s smile was not pleasant. ‘On that table is a list of supplies and troops. I will give it to you, in support of your campaign to the south.’

‘In exchange for,’ said Damen, steadily.

‘Delpha,’ said Laurent in the same tone.

He felt the shock that made him remember that this was Laurent, and not any other young man of twenty. The province of Delpha belonged to Nikandros, his friend and supporter, who had pledged to him in trust. It was valuable in its own right, richly fertile, with a strong seaport. It had symbolic value too, as the site of Akielos’s greatest victory, and Vere’s greatest defeat. Its return would strengthen Laurent’s position, but weaken his own.

The thought of the Regent in his country was a danger that was almost sickening in its intensity. The Regent already controlled the Akielon palace guard, which had been his gift to Kastor. Now the Regent himself was in Ios, his troops poised at any moment to take the capital on his command—and Damen was here, hundreds of miles away, facing Laurent and his impossible ultimatum.

He took a long breath, steadied himself, forced himself to remember what he had learned in the long months since he had left Akielos. ‘Laurent,’ he said, ‘I will not make you my enemy.’

‘I am glad to hear it.  We will make a fine appearance of allies.  Once you agree to my terms.’

‘But I cannot agree.  That is Nikandros’ territory, and I cannot make agreements for my friend without consulting him.’

‘Then you will not have my support.’

‘I never expected your support.  I was prepared to leave this country alone, with nothing.  You have already given me Nikandros and his forces.  I want your friendship and your alliance, and you will always have mine, but I cannot agree to unfair terms that will perpetuate hostility between our countries.’

Laurent gave a bitter laugh. ‘You only have Delpha because of your father’s war.  You think that didn’t perpetuate hostility between our countries?’

‘I know it did.  And I know now what that victory cost us both.  You lost a brother.  I lost the chance to know an honourable man, and to make peace with my neighbours. I will not make that mistake again.’

Laurent gave an exasperated shrug, as though impatient with his naïveté.  ‘You cannot make peace alone.’

‘I don’t expect you to agree right away.  I understand that trust and – reconciliation will take time.’

Laurent turned away.  ‘As long as Akielos holds Delpha by force, there will be no peace between our countries.’

Damen could not help a quick glance at the list Laurent had drawn up.  The supplies would certainly make his campaign easier, and it seemed that Laurent was in a position to provide them. 

He said, ‘Laurent, can we not work together?  Our goals are aligned.  Our enemies have allied themselves.  Why can we not also – ’

‘You expect me to form an alliance with my brother’s killer?  With nothing in exchange?’

‘I offer you my friendship and support.  My _continued_ friendship and support.  The goodwill of Akielos and a commitment to negotiate fair terms for both parties.  What more do you want?’

‘Delpha.’

Damen felt his shoulders drop with resignation.  ‘Then we must go our own ways.  My offer will stand.’

There was a silence after he spoke. He and Laurent stood three paces from one another.

‘There’s something else I have,’ said Laurent, ‘that you want.’

Laurent’s cool blue eyes were on him, his pose relaxed where he stood, with all the filtered light of the tent in his lashes. Damen felt those words working on him, his body reacting almost against his will.

‘Guion,’ said Laurent, ‘has agreed to testify in writing to the details of the deal that he brokered between Kastor and my uncle during his time as Ambassador.’

Damen flushed. It was not what he had expected Laurent to say, and Laurent knew it. For a moment, what was unsaid hung thickly between them.

‘Did you think,’ said Laurent, ‘that I would come here without the means to enforce my terms? I hold the only proof of Kastor’s treachery that extends beyond your word.’

Damen’s hands became fists for a moment. Then he remembered the old and battered letter he’d seen, written in Laurent’s hand.  ‘You already offered that to Nikandros, in exchange for his aid. He upheld his side of the agreement. You would not break yours.’

‘Would I not? Then by all means, reject my offer. When Guion is executed for treason I will explain to Nikandros why the proof is lost.’

‘You would not break your word,’ Damen repeated. He returned to the unspoken words between them, which seemed more important to him now. ‘Are we going to play another kind of pretend? That it never happened?’

‘If you are concerned it will go unmentioned between us, never fear. Every man in my camp knows that you served me in bed.’

He felt fundamentally outmanoeuvred—even as he could see that Laurent was bargaining alone, with very little, for his political life.  He thought of all Laurent had done here, every piece of impersonal leverage, to control this meeting, to make it play out on his terms. 

Was Delpha really what Laurent wanted to stake everything on?  Even if Damen agreed to it, he could not act on that agreement until the campaign was over and he was on the throne in Akielos.  Surely what Laurent needed now was more immediate, more desperate than that – he needed an alliance with Damen to defeat his uncle, just as urgently as Damen needed his support to defeat Kastor.  Delpha, Damen realized, was the sweetener – the cover that would allow him to form the alliance he needed with Damianos. 

Strange that Laurent’s offerings – supplies, support, proof of Kastor’s treachery – were all things Damen had never expected or hoped for.  In the end, they were not so hard to leave behind.  The hard part was to walk away from Laurent, to give up on that delicate thing that had grown between them.  It might never have had a right to exist, but Damen had reached a resolution, an understanding of what kind of king he wanted to be, that he would hold on to in the face of anything else.

He said slowly, ‘We will make an honourable agreement on Delpha.  You have my word on that.  I trust you to come to a fair agreement with me when the time is right.  I don’t ask you for anything in exchange.’

‘That is not – ’

‘Laurent.  I will walk away if I must.  But as long as you are king of Vere and I am king of Akielos, our countries will be friends.  I will not make the same mistake twice.  You do not need to bargain with me for fairness or for my support.  I cannot agree to unfair terms, but you will never be my enemy.’

‘Do you think any of this will make me forget what you are?  What you did?’

‘I don’t ask for your forgiveness, or even your friendship.  I know true reconciliation between us may never be possible.  But for the future we both want – I think you need to trust me now.’  He took a step forward and put out his hands, palms open in front of him. ‘Let our alliance be made freely, not coerced – based on feelings of mutual regard, if nothing else.  Let us agree to work together.  It is all I can offer you, and all I want.’

For a several long moments the silence held, and Damen’s heart seemed to stop beating as he waited for Laurent’s response. But whatever the outcome, he had never been more certain of what he was doing. 

And then, finally, Laurent looked away with the smallest nod. 

Damen felt the tension rush out of his body, replaced with something sweeter, something dizzying in its promise. He spoke softly, because that was all that was left in him.  ‘I have your agreement?’

‘Yes.’

Then, as if a pillar of control had finally collapsed, Laurent surrendered his full weight to the table behind him, his face drained of all colour. He was trembling, his hairline pricked with the sweat of injury.

Damen said, “Now, let me see your injury.’


End file.
